G-Technology Studio RAID

BSVP On-Site at NAB talked with Mark Anderson from G-Technology about their new G-RAID Studio and the G-Speed Studio hardware RAID

G-Technology won the Videomaker Best of NAB 2014 Award for the new Studio RAID with Thunderbolt 2.

The Studio line has a 2-bay system and a 4-bay system. The 2-bay system is set up with vertical drives. The unit ships with enterprise class drives in RAID 0 with the option of reconfiguring the drives for RAID 1 or Jbod*. The Studio RAID delivers 360MB/s transfer rate with their 6TB helium drives. You also have the option of ordering the RAID with 3TB or 4TB standard UltraStar enterprise class hard drives. The Thunderbolt 2 cable is also included which is backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 1.

The 6TB, two drive system with 2 3TB RAID 0 drives is $699, the 8TB version with 2 4TB drives is $849 and the 12TB version with 2 6TB helium drives is $1,299.

The G-Speed Studio RAID system with 4 bays can be set up as RAID 0,1,5,10 and Jbod**. G-Technology understands that the type of user that would purchase the G-Speed Studio would most likely set up the system in RAID 5. Those that have setup a RAID 5 array know that it takes a while. So G-Technology is shipping the G-Speed RAID in RAID 5.

But if you decide that you would rather work in RAID 0 or the other RAID levels, the process to set them up is faster. By shipping in RAID 5, however, you save the 10 hours or more waiting for the drives to initialize. You can start using it right out of the box.

The 12TB version with 4 3TB drives is $2,199, the 16TB with 4 4TB drives is $2,699 and the 24TB version with 4 6TB helium drives is $3,599 with up to 700MB/s transfer rate.

Part of the reason why the Studio RAIDs have their shape is because G-Tech is utilizing the same strategy as Apple when it come to cooling their drives. They have a large diameter fan at the bottom so it doesn’t have to spin as fast and thus it’s quieter. Along with multiple thermometers inside which measures the temperature and keeps the fans running at the right speed to keep the drives running at their optimum temperature. The cooling fan is actually quieter than the hard drives.

*RAID 0 is for optimum transfer speed between drives, but offers no internal backup.
RAID 1, also known as mirrored RAID writes to both drives at the same time, so if one of the drives fail, the data is safe on the other drive.
In Jbod (Just a Bunch of Discs) mode, the drives in the unit are seen as individual drives and can be removed and replaced without configuring a RAID.

**RAID 5 is configured so that the data is shared across all 4 drives. If one of the discs fail, the data can be recovered from the remaining drives.
RAID 10 is a combination of levels 1 and 0. A RAID level 10 array can sustain multiple drive failures, but only if the right drives fail.